Auren Hoffman, founder and CEO of SafeGraph, discusses why active founders provide better tactical advice to startups than legacy VCs who retired from operating years ago.
“Almost everything in running a company has changed over the last seven years. So if you sold your company 10 years ago, you don't know anything about how customer success works, how new types of sales works, how product led growth works, how even like all the recruiting stack works. You're really just out of date, maybe on the very, very big things. You're still current because those things are timeless and they don't change, but all the medium and small things have changed dramatically.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Auren Hoffman
Opinion
Hoffman: Most successful startup founders have low emotional intelligence
“Well, most good founders have low EQ.”
Auren HoffmanNov 3, 2023▶ 7:22Roundtable #5 with Jack Altman, Auren Hoffman, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings | E1077 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
AssertionContradicted
Hoffman: Founder CEOs are paid 5x less than external CEO hires
“Founder CEOs are very undercompensated. Like the go forward comp for a founder CEO today, once you, let's say you're there for over four years, your go forward comp is probably five X lower than if they hired an outside CEO.”
Auren HoffmanNov 3, 2023▶ 7:51Roundtable #5 with Jack Altman, Auren Hoffman, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings | E1077 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hoffman: Any time a CEO spends outside of work hurts the business
“I would say really any time a CEO is not spending on their company, it's bad for the business. But that's true. If you're dating, it's true. If you're being a spouse, if you're parenting kids, if you're working out, You're spending time with friends. If you're…”
Auren HoffmanNov 3, 2023▶ 27:41Roundtable #5 with Jack Altman, Auren Hoffman, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings | E1077 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionOpen · timeframe Nov 2028
Hoffman: LPs will cease re-upping with non-performing VC fund managers
“Well, I do think there were a lot of VCs with subpar returns that were still raising their third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh funds. That is very unlikely going to happen in the future. So I think you're the, sorry, VCs that were doing that from LPs. And so …”
Auren HoffmanNov 3, 2023▶ 33:01Roundtable #5 with Jack Altman, Auren Hoffman, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings | E1077 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Hoffman: Venture capital firms will increasingly specialize team roles
“You're going to start to see different firms start splitting the stack a bit, and they're going to have certain people who are going to be good... You're going to start to see that much more so with investing, where if you're going to have a team anyway, and i…”
Auren HoffmanNov 3, 2023▶ 19:10Roundtable #5 with Jack Altman, Auren Hoffman, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings | E1077 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hoffman: LPs should prefer venture funds led by active CEOs
“It is actually, they're generally not happy when someone in the fund is like also a CEO, but they should be because that fund's going to end up doing so much better. You're going to get into better deals, et cetera.”
Auren HoffmanNov 3, 2023▶ 29:10Roundtable #5 with Jack Altman, Auren Hoffman, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings | E1077 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.